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PRO TIP: Convert Your Footage
I’ve been wondering why Premiere runs so slowly on my top-of-the-line iMac. Last week, I used Final Cut Pro 7 again and was blown away with how quickly I could scrub through footage. Fast forward to yesterday when I got a bunch of footage to work with and dropped it into the Mercury Playback Engine timeline and I wanted to pull my hair out. Searching for BROLL was like using a slide projector filled with melted candy.
Then I remembered that FCP probably wouldn’t even RECOGNIZE the footage that I’m editing currently on Premiere, it must have been ProRes. I converted the footage to ProRes 422 and now it works like butter.
Long story short, convert your footage, folks! Don’t believe Adobe, their timeline is not magical. The footage I was working with that I converted was AVC-Intra 444 1080p. Anyone out there on a Mac Pro have trouble with this codec, too? (Also MXF gives me problems)
Looking forward to the next version with auto-conversion!
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19 Replies
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I recently learned to convert my DSLR footage into Cineform FS2 codecs 12bits for post preparation. It also help to reduce banding and allow you to work more with Lumetri filters without revealing too much artifacts.
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[Dan DeStefano] “The footage I was working with that I converted was AVC-Intra 444 1080p.”
How fast is your storage? By going from AVC-Intra 444 to ProRes 422 you cut the data rate dramatically so it could be that your storage isn’t fast enough for it.
Of course nothing is magical, and there has always been a penalty for editing with a camera native codec, but Adobe has made it more viable than many other NLEs. I’ve been using PPro for the last 3yrs or so and I’ve always gotten good enough performance from my ’09 MP that I never felt the need to transcode for editing (granted I haven’t worked with that AVC coded yet so I don’t know how it would perform).
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I’ve managed to run everything but the AVCHD codecs natively. It’s a shitty codec.
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[Tero Ahlfors] “I’ve managed to run everything but the AVCHD codecs natively. It’s a shitty codec.”
AVC-Intra isn’t AVCHD though. Intra is, as the name implies, an intra-frame codec, as opposed to AVCHD is is inter-frame, and it’s largely dealing with inter-frame/GOP codecs that results in the increased processing overhead for playback. And AVC-Intra 4:4:4 is, I believe, a 12-bit codec designed as a mastering/finishing codec so it could be too much for the iMac in question to handle, but not because it’s inherently a bad codec. I mean, ProRes 4444 is more likely to cause a machine to choke and ProRes 422, but that doesn’t mean 4444 is a bad codec.
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Any h.264 based codec makes my system choke, and any system I work with, really. I’ve learned to treat Premiere like I used to treat Final Cut and convert my footage. It’s so frustrating to scrub through footage to try and find good clips and for the viewer to just show me like five frames as I scrub through. That’s why I convert. Using less intense codecs like AVC from the Sony A7S is bearable, but not ideal. It wasn’t till I used this AVC-Intra footage that I reeeally wanted to pull my hair out.
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one thing to consider (and possibly related), the last few iterations of CUDA have been
under performing. (at least for me and my setup)I did a multicam 2hr 14 min edit recently, with CUDA enabled it
was completely useless…switching to OpenCL it performed very smooth.This was 3 camera angles all MTS (canon) footage, 1080i.
I have not need to transcode any footage since making the switch to CS 5.5 years ago (now on CC 2015.2)
and I’m thankful for that. -
I’m with Dan on this. I convert MXFs to to ProRes 422. It is smooth sailing then. My client tells me not to convert but he’s probably not used to fast response from the machine. It is pretty slow when editing native MXFs. I run the files through EditReady and Bob’s your uncle:)
I work off amax specced 15″ rMBP. It would be better if you’re on a trash can Mac though.
KannanKannan Raghavan
The Big Toad Films Pte. Ltd. -
Hi…
Shouldn’t the newer workflow of dynamically replacing native with Proxy assist with this?
there’s nothing to say that Proxies have to be of lesser quality….
what if it’s simply a transcode to a better performing codec?
So now you can start editing sluggishly and see performance improve progressively as material is replaced with the proxy set over time in the bkg?
Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
Let’s Connect on Linkedin
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I will say with mxf footage from Sony FS7, though I do not transcode,
it sometimes stutters at first when starting playback at the very beginning
of a sequence but then is butter smooth right after and it doesn’t always do that.Also, if I render the sequence it never ever stutters…with all native .mxf
8 core mac pro tower, 32gb of ram, Nvidia GTX 680, Raid 5 pci-e direct connect. (caldigit HDOne)
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I’m a quandary about this. I’m doing a project in Arri C 4444, at 2048 x 1152. PrP CC current. Once the sequence gets a few layers and a few minutes long, it lags like crazy, especially with the 2 camera interviews. I have to render constantly, and then it’s fine. I feel I’m back in the days of Avid 4.5. So I’m wondering what’s the best among these options:
a) spend a bunch of money preparing for 4K, get the latest biggest baddest iMac with an SSD drive, a newer video card (AMD 395) and hope that all problems magically disappear?
b) transcode and edit in ‘proxy’ or low-res, then go to high rez on output? This was the method that drove me to leave Avid for Premiere among other things.
c) just keep suffering.
System specs: iMac, 27″, mid-2011,3.4 ghz, 2TB HDD, AMD6970 (currently getting replaced by Apple for free as it died), media is on Raid 0 OWC Thunderbolt 4 TB drive.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Bill Lattanzi
Zi Creative, Boston
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